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Last Day Teaching | 12/01/03

I woke up unusually early (sans alarm clock) to work on the final chunks of my presentation. I finished it in about two hours and left for class on time (or so I thought). I walked into the type of classroom that was oddly like the first day of teaching class. Everyone is there, sitting and waiting in complete silence for whomever is in charge to tell them some sort of big secret. Usually the secret consists of your name, what the class is about and ends with the stimulating handing-out of the syllabi. Today, though, there would be no syllabi distribution. I took of my coat in front of the class dramatically and cleared my throat of my pesky midwestern accent (pronounced eaccent). As I took my first breath in, I was informed I was not first in line and sulked to my seat. I was excited to blow the class away with some unabashedly egocentric comments by Soler but lo and behold, Adam's paper was on ethos and pathos! He gave only the second presentation up to that point that didn't bore me at any point. Once finished, I got up there in my shiny garnetesque-color shirt and gave out my handouts. The handouts had about four lines of text on them all superimposed onto the crudely drawn caricature head of Antonio Soler. People laughed when they received it. I wasn't really trying to be funny with it, but I'm glad they didn't boo. Except for Trey. But he always boos. Anyway, I drew a poor picture of western Europe on the board and tried to explain why Spain was 50 years behind everyone in their writings. I then went over my sheet and gave an example and my ten minutes was up. I did manage to confuse Castilian with Catalan in my explanation of the dialect of the treatise, which confused the other Spanish speaker in the room and I had no choice but to own up to it after the class within earshot of my professor (naturally). After class Theory-Chris came over and we ordered Chinese food. I think his theory of them-taking-longer-so-you'll-be-hungrier-and-it'll-taste-better is completely accurate. I then dropped off my rent check to our ever-cheery manager (when collecting $600) and made a quick deposit at the bank before purchasing two more fish for the cichlid aquarium. I scoured online looking for pictures but I couldn't find them. They are big, well about 2.5" and one looks like a leopard. They both have big mouths. That's really all I can say about them. As of right now, we have had no deaths but one of the Electric Yellows seems to be swimming funny. He's eating, though. I don't know if fish don't eat when their sick. I heard that they only have a three second memory, so maybe he forgot he was sick and ate some grub. I rearranged the tank (as advised everywhere I looked) before adding the new fish (complete with new hollow log) and they all seem to be getting along fine now. I felt bad about leaving the 3rd one in the tank but at $11/ea I couldn't afford to bring him home with me. Chris Rix (the fish) finally showed himself to me today after hiding out for the past couple days. Tomorrow is my last real day teaching this semester and I'm excited that there's a possibility I won't get 400 emails a day asking how to do things I said the first day. And every day since. Also, if you check this site more than once every day, it only changes ONCE a day. ONCE. I'm a busy guy, you know, though I do appreciate the counter moving up 30 hits a day.